“It may not have seemed so to you,” her husband pointed out, “but you must remember that it was very nearly dark, that you were in bed and naturally terrified. Of course, he had to deny it. He must try to save his skin somehow, but if he didn’t throw that gun into the laurel bush, who did? We tested the distance. It was just about as far as a man, jerking it in the ordinary way, could throw it. Cotton tried, and it fell within a few feet.”
“What is going to be done with it?” she enquired.
“Eventually,” he confided, “it will find its way to Scotland Yard. For the present, the Chief Constable—Ted Hartopp, you know—is on his way over from Winchester to take care of it. Why, you don’t want to see it, do you?”
She shuddered.
“Of course I do not,” she said reproachfully.
“It comes to this,” Andrew went on, leaning a little forward to arrange his tie, “that either this is Drayton’s revolver—the revolver he did the trick with and chucked into the shrubbery, when he got into the car—or some one has planted it there deliberately, with the idea of strengthening the case against him. Of course, if that were the truth, it would be a low-down trick, and the fellow who did it would deserve all that was coming to him; but I’m afraid I’m rather changing my mind, Félice. I don’t regret having helped Drayton—you can give his wife another five hundred quid if you want to—but I’m beginning to believe that he did the trick… . Yes, I know,” he continued, turning away from the glass in search of his coat, “I know that he and his wife and his friends—and even the police—agree that he never carried a gun, but they can’t tell that he hadn’t one that night, put away as a last resort. That’s how it looks to me. You see, this was a much bigger job than he usually took on. What is it, Brooks?”
There had been a knock at the door. Andrew’s valet entered.
“Major Hartopp is in the library, my lord, just arrived from Winchester,” he announced.
“Show him into the billiard room and tell him I’ll be down in two minutes,” Andrew directed. “Shall you come with us and hear what he has to say, Félice?”
She clung to his arm.
“I do not believe that I want to very much,” she sighed, “but I will. Andrew?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Do you really imagine that there could be any one so wicked in the world as to hide that pistol and hope that it would be found, just to make it seem that it must have belonged to Drayton? But what a horrible idea!”
He hesitated.
“A man who has committed murder,” he pronounced—“murder in cold blood—for whoever shot De Besset shot him in cold blood—is capable of anything. The most satisfactory thing would be if Drayton, now that the gun has been found, were to confess.”
“Confess to a crime which he did not commit?” she exclaimed indignantly.
He passed his arm around her waist, and they descended the stairs together.
CHAPTER XX
They found several others of the house party in the billiard room, and Andrew, after greeting his visitor, unlocked a gun cabinet, produced the revolver, and laid it upon the table. It was a weapon of fairly modern type, with the flat handle and narrow barrels generally affected by the person who wishes to conceal the fact that he is armed. Hartopp examined it closely, turning it over once or twice in his hand. It was caked with mud in some places, and there was a little rust upon the barrels.
“I don’t think,” Sir Richard remarked, as he noticed the Chief Constable’s precautions, “that we need consider the matter of finger prints. Personally, I used my handkerchief when it was brought to me, but that was probably too late, as the keeper was carrying it by the butt. In any case, even a few nights lying in an exposed place like that would obliterate any finger prints.”
“A few nights!” Hartopp exclaimed. “It’s six weeks to-day since the murder.”
“Precisely,” was the dry rejoinder, “but at present we have nothing but surmise to connect the finding of this weapon with the murder.”
The Chief Constable smiled.
“You legal gentlemen are a little finicky,” he observed, “but a weapon found exactly where you would expect the burglar to have disposed of it, knowing that pursuit was close at hand, certainly seems pretty well to speak for itself.”
“Curious thing, though,” Sir Richard reflected, “I have naturally had one or two conversations with the sergeant here. His men drew a cordon of fifty yards round the car and searched for a whole day without finding a thing. This weapon must have been within that orbit.”
“A fact which shows, I am afraid,” Major Hartopp confessed, “that my country police are sometimes a little at fault. They’re a pretty rustic lot, I must admit.”
“Or else that the revolver wasn’t there when they searched.”
The Chief Constable smiled tolerantly.
“I see your point,” he observed. “You’re suggesting that the weapon was planted here. Ingenious, but a little far-fetched. There is another thing too, Sir Richard, which I am afraid you will find it difficult to get over.”
He pointed to the end of the stock. The lawyer adjusted his eyeglass and bent downwards.
“Some one appears,” Major Hartopp pointed out, “to have rudely scratched his initials there. What do you make of those two letters? I must confess that they look to me like an ‘M’ and a ‘D.’”
Sir Richard nodded. He studied the initials for some time.
“Well,” he remarked presently, “it may not, after all, be difficult to convince a jury that a man who takes a revolver out with him to commit a murder and throws it away afterwards, knowing full well that some day or other it will be found, doesn’t as a rule scratch his initials on it.”
Major Hartopp shrugged his shoulders.
“Sir Richard,” he said, “you and I both know something about criminals, and I don’t mind telling you that my experience is that in matters of this sort they are the biggest lot of fools on God’s earth. I can recall within the last seven years at least half a dozen murders where the criminal has covered up his tracks with the utmost cunning and yet left one perfectly obvious thread dangling for any one to see. They’ll go out of their way to guard themselves against the most abstruse things, and the perfectly obvious trap they’ll fall into blindfold. Can I have the weapon locked up, Glenlitten?” he concluded, turning away and looking hopefully towards the tray of cocktails which Parkins was bringing in.
“Of course you can.”
“One moment,” Sir Richard begged.
He took up the magnifying glass which some one had produced and examined the rough letters which had been scratched upon the stock. When he set it down, it was with a slight gesture of contempt.
“I suppose you are all thinking,” he said, “that the finding of this has cooked poor Drayton’s goose. I don’t mind telling you—bit unprofessional, I suppose, but still it can’t do much harm—I don’t mind telling you all that I never felt so hopeful of getting him off.”
“Just why?” Andrew asked curiously.
“Because,” Sir Richard continued, holding his cocktail up to the light, “I am convinced now that the real murderer is something of a fool as well as a rogue. I have three reasons for believing that this weapon was planted where it was found. Lock it up. Andrew—lock it up by